BattleTech is letting folks channel their inner Godzillas on June 4th with its second expansion, Urban Warfare. Its biggest addition is a new and deliciously destructible set of city environments, with rooftops to jump-jet onto or embarrassingly fall off. As expected, there will also be a pair of new 'Mech types, a set of new smaller vehicles (including cars to step on, though I don't…

Lovely as it was, Harebrained Schemes's BattleTech felt like it trimmed back many of the tabletop game's wilder elements. RogueTech, a messy compilation of mods organised by "LadyAlekto" and crew, reinstates these complex rules and lets you bolt just about anything onto your big stompy bots up to and including the contents of the kitchen sink. If riding a clattering, improvised pirate 'Mech into battle…

The doors have been opened, the games inside have been devoured, and now it's time to recycle the cardboard. Below you'll find all of our picks for the best PC games of 2018, gathered together in a single post for easy reading.

Lasers are nice, but if anime has taught me anything, all you need a blade the size of a truck. Released today, Flashpoint is the first of three planned expansions for Harebrained Scheme's stompybot mercenary manager Battletech. There's three new mechs (including the melee-loving Hatchetman above), a new mission type geared towards lighter mechs, sunny tropical planets and a major extension to the post-story endgame.…

Is... is it over yet? Are the Black Friday and Cyber Monday PC gaming deals finally finished? Just a couple more hours to go now, you can do it deals herald, you can get through this. You've got a week and a half holiday coming up soon, just get through the afternoon and then you can go and lie in a dark room and not…

Even before its recent public gameplay unveiling, Cyberpunk 2077 was the target of a very particular piece of criticism. Perhaps sparked by the transphobic joke made by the game's Twitter account, many online have been calling out 2077 for presenting yet another future that, despite its overt themes of transhumanism and body modification, falls strictly into the gender binary. Despite the gender diversity already prevalent…

The first expansion for BattleTech will arrive in November, publishers Paradox announced today, with a new type of story mission chain and new mechs including... wait, this mech carries an axe to chop other mechs to pieces? Hatchetman, I want you. Come meet this robolad and his huge chopper in the trailer below. Oh, and learn about those new missions and mechs and whatnot for…

We're just about halfway through 2018 (which has somehow taken both too long and no time at all). As is tradition, we've shaken our our brains around to see which games from the last six months still make our neurons fizzle with delight. Then we wrote about them here, in this big list feature that you're reading right now this second. And what games they…

Turn-based giant mech argy-bargy BattleTech doesn't officially support mods, but it doesn't officially not support mods either. Though we're denied the ease of clicking a 'subscribe' icon in the Steam Workshop, that ol'Nexus is littered with smart and ridiculous remixes of BattleTech's ten-storey war songs. For the time being, most aesthetic overhauls are ruled out - a great shame, as I'd love to see more…

We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there. 2018 releases Jurassic World…

An entirely objective ranking of the 50 best PC strategy games ever made, now freshened up to include our favourites from 2017 and 2018. From intricate, global-scale wargames to the tight thrills of guerrilla squads, the broad expanse of the genre contains something for everyone, and we've gathered the best of the best. The vast majority are available to buy digitally, a few are free…

BattleTech might have stomped its way straight onto the turn-based mech combat throne, but while its central torso was strong and mighty, its outer armour sported a few noticeable holes. We'd been promised a patch that would introduce speed-up options for those who crave 'em (hello!), along with tackling its weirdly greedy GPU needs and adding new difficulty toggles for battle-scarred veterans who can blow…

Paradox Interactive have announced they are buying Harebrained Schemes, expanding their power as the heavyweight champ of traditional PC gaming. Y'know, Paradox, the Swedish mob who make games including Crusader Kings II and Stellaris as well as publishing loads more. And y'know, Harebrained Schemes, the American studio behind Shadowrun and BattleTech - and which was co-founded by a fella who helped create those tabletop worlds,…

I've been on something of an emotional journey with Harebrained Schemes' turn-based mech combat game, BattleTech. I was turned off by its unusually slow animation speeds and drawn-out wars of attrition during my first dozen-odd hours of play, but a combination of speed-up mods and deepening understanding of rules the game itself did not take the time to explain saw me fall ever-deeper in love…

Stompy-bot management sim BattleTech may not technically have native mod support, but developers Harebrained Schemes aren't so proud as to keep all their data under lock and key. Realising that folks would want to poke around inside the guts of their latest game, they left much of its file structure open and human-editable. One of the nicer little mods to come from this is Unlock Full…

The dadification of games continues. So we’re going full Dad this week on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, as we’ve been asked to talk about the games we play with our children. Alec’s daughter is excited by the unlockable characters in Rayman Legends (and she’s also strangely fascinated by Battletech). John’s son is a bit younger and likes to watch his dad diving…

Hullo! John is preoccupied with wizards right now, so I'm taking over for the rundown of last week's top ten on Steam. It was an interesting week, bringing back some welcome old games and slamming in some shiny new ones. Largely, it's all about robots and survival.

Some might say that BattleTech's meta-game is the strategy layer - all that base-building, mech-fixing'n'fitting, pilot management and parts-shopping required to ultimately create an unstoppable army of heavy metal death. Those people are dead wrong. The overarching goal of BattleTech, the true purpose of its turn-based fights and base management alike, is that you gotta catch 'em all. By which I mean, you gotta kneecap…

Bad news for people who love it when I bang on about BattleTech's speed/delay problems every single time I post about it: the devs are planning to offer "accelerated combat options" in a month or two. More unit customisation, difficulty settings and UI improvements are also due in the first major update, though ahead of that, they'll be breaking out their welding torches and fixing…